Thessaloniki Festival Announces Four Competitors

Thessaloniki Festival Announces Four Competitors

The International Thessaloniki Film Festival has announced four of the 13films that will comprise this year’s International Competition. Programmedby festival director, Michel Demopoulos, the films include only first orsecond features by emerging directors: “Tired Companions” by Zoran Solomun(Germany), “Twentyfour Seven” by Shane Meadows (UK), Knut Erik Jensen’s “Burnt By Frost” (Norway) and Lee Chang-Dong’s “Green Fish” (Korea). Two prizes are awarded in the competitive section: the Golden Alexander with a cash prize of $50,000 and the Silver Alexander with a $30,000 purse.

Thessaloniki also announced titles in its popular New Horizons sectionprogrammed by Dimitri Elpides: straight from the New York Film Festivalcomes two films: Palme d’Or winner, “Taste of Cherries” by Abbas Kiarostamiand Takeski Kitano’s HANA-BI. Also included is Janos Szasz’s “The Witman Boys” (Hungary).

The festival boasts a retrospective and new film from French directorClaude Chabrol, “Rien Na Va Plus“, which is the director’s 50th (winning boththe Golden Shell and Best Director awards at the recent San SebastianFest.) Also included in the festival’s 10 day film bash are spotlights ondocumentarian Errol Morris, works by Portugal’s Manoel de Oliviera andRussia’s Alexander Sukorov, a tribute to Mexican master Arturo Ripstein, acompetitive section devoted only to Greek film and a special subsectioncalled “The Balkans: Times of Turmoil,” including among others, “Calling the Ghosts” by Mandy Jacobson and Karmen Jelincic (USA/Croatia) and AdemirKenovic’s “The Perfect Circle” (Bosnia/France).

The festival will be held at Thessaloniki’s newly renovated Olympion Cinemacenter from November 21-30.